Abstract
Quantitative information is omnipresent in the world and a wide range of species has been shown to use quantities to optimize their decisions. While most studies have focused on vertebrates, a growing body of research demonstrates that also insects such as honeybees possess basic quantitative abilities that might aid them in finding profitable flower patches. However, it remains unclear if for insects, quantity is a salient feature relative to other stimulus dimensions, or if it is only used as a “last resort” strategy in case other stimulus dimensions are inconclusive. Here, we tested the stingless bee Trigona fuscipennis, a species representative of a vastly understudied group of tropical pollinators, in a quantity discrimination task. In four experiments, we trained wild, free-flying bees on stimuli that depicted either one or four elements. Subsequently, bees were confronted with a choice between stimuli that matched the training stimulus either in terms of quantity or another stimulus dimension. We found that bees were able to discriminate between the two quantities, but performance differed depending on which quantity was rewarded. Furthermore, quantity was more salient than was shape. However, quantity did not measurably influence the bees' decisions when contrasted with color or surface area. Our results demonstrate that just as honeybees, small-brained stingless bees also possess basic quantitative abilities. Moreover, invertebrate pollinators seem to utilize quantity not only as "last resort" but as a salient stimulus dimension. Our study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on quantitative cognition in invertebrate species and adds to our understanding of the evolution of numerical cognition.
Highlights
Quantitative information is omnipresent in the world and plays an integral part in even the simplest tasks in our daily lives
This study aimed to explore quantitative abilities in a small-brained species of stingless bees, Trigona fuscipennis, and investigate the importance of quantitative information relative to other stimulus dimensions
T. fuscipennis is a species of stingless bees belonging to the New World Clade of the Meliponini (Rasmussen and Cameron 2010), which is common throughout Central America, as well as in Colombia and western Ecuador
Summary
Quantitative information is omnipresent in the world and plays an integral part in even the simplest tasks in our daily lives. We use quantitative information such as number, size, length, or weight to measure, rank, and order things. This kind of information allows us to understand and interact with the world in incredibly sophisticated ways. A subfield of quantitative cognition that has received much attention in the human literature is numerical cognition. Quantitative cognition, and in particular numerical cognition, has been viewed as uniquely human and closely linked to language and education (Descartes and Lafleur 1960; Kant 1781; Ross 1908). Comparative research has convincingly demonstrated that humans' closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates, possess basic quantitative abilities that can handle both continuous and discrete quantities. Primates are capable of absolute and relative quantity judgments (e.g., Beran 2004; Hanus and Call 2007; Hicks 1956; Jordan and Brannon 2006), they possess counting-like abilities (e.g., Beran 2001; Boysen and Berntson 1989; see Beran 2017 for a review) and even have the capacity to perform
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